Posted by Angelo A. Paparelli on March 03, 2012

Stop the Immigration Profiling

Private Dino Paparelli.jpgSurprising as it may be to Italian-American youth of today, with a Cuomo as governor of New York and a Scalia and an Alito as Supreme Court justices, this kid of 1950s' Detroit hated his Italian name and resented his father for having conferred it.  "Angelo Alfredo Paparelli" was too much ethnicity to bear. 

I'm not named "Angelo" because of my father's fondness for heavenly creatures, nor was I given the middle moniker "Alfredo" for his love of a certain pasta sauce.  Under the Italian naming tradition of primogenitore, my name was predestined.  The first-born male would take the first name of the paternal grandfather as the newborn's first name, and the first name of the father as his middle name; and that was that.

I hated my name, not for any dislike of Italy, but because I yearned to be accepted as an American, just like the Nelsons and Cleavers on TV. My supposed TV role model, alas, was Private Dino Paparelli of the depressingly-titled You'll Never Get Rich series (later known as The Phil Silvers Show), with the dim-witted Dino as one member of a crew of conniving Army motor-pool conscripts who regularly hoodwinked their WASPish officers.

Cass Tech.jpgI remember precisely when my name went from personal abhorrence to appreciation. The scene:  Cass Tech High School, near Downtown Detroit, during auditions for The Solid Gold Cadillac.  When the director called my name to audition, a beautiful blonde senior named Barbara exclaimed: "Angelo Paparelli! What a wonderful name!"   

I didn't get the part, but I had a more valuable epiphany.  My name could be Ishkabibble or Geronimo -- it didn't matter.  I was just as American as former Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams, who had a house in Grosse Pointe, and the Boyd and Williams families of Black Americans in my neighborhood; no more or less American than the Poles of Hamtramck, the Mexicans who lived near Briggs (now Tiger) Stadium, the Jews of Oak Park, the Arabs of Dearborn, or the lesbians who frequented the bar around the corner. This epiphany probably had something, at least subliminally, to do with my becoming an immigration lawyer. 

Once ensconced in my chosen vocation, I learned, however, that immigration law is not ecumenical. I discovered that until 1952, non-whites could never become citizens (although native-born Blacks were Americans from day one under the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship clause). As my colleague Prof. Kevin R. Johnson notes in "THE 'NEW' CIVIL RIGHTS: IS THE 'NEW' BIRMINGHAM THE SAME AS THE 'OLD' BIRMINGHAM?," a paper he'll discuss with me at a Chapman University Sociology conference next week:

During the post-Civil War period, the largest groups of immigrants affected by the whiteness prerequisite for citizenship came from Asia. Asian immigrants perpetually were denied the opportunity to naturalize and become U.S. citizens (and thus were perpetually disenfranchised from the political process). [FN]

[FN] See, e.g., Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178, 190 (1922) (finding that Japanese immigrant was not eligible for naturalization); United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) (same for immigrant from India).

Indeed, it was not until 1965 that the National Origins Formula, which effectively barred Asians from immigrating, was abolished with the passage of the Hart-Celler Act. 

Over the years, I've seen the immigration color and national-origin barriers resurface repeatedly.  If you're a Cuban and arrive at Florida's shores, we release you to family, let you stay and give you a green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act; not so, if you're a Haitian. 

In the late 1980s, if you sought an L-1B work visa from the UK or France to work for a car company, you were in like a swoosh; but if you hailed from Japan and were destined for a job in the auto industry, the U.S. Consulate in Osaka persuaded INS that an extralegal moratorium on L-1B issuance was necessary.

Today, if you were born in Mexico, China or India, you face decades of waiting for your date with immigration destiny -- your green card priority date.  Although this may change with enactment of a bill enjoying bipartisan support -- The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act -- nothing will happen to eliminate this disparate treatment by place of birth until a certain senator from the Cornhusker State lifts his hold on the legislation. And Osaka Redux: The U.S. consular posts in India and the latter-day INS, USCIS, now have been unmasked as inexplicably denying a much larger percentage of L-1B visas and petitions for Indian citizens, while those from Europe sail through.

Even though Congress remains in suspended animation until November's elections, immediate corrections are nevertheless possible. The Obama Administration can help eliminate these unlawful barriers.  A simple but emphatic executive order would do the trick. 

The President should declare that -- unless affirmatively mandated by law -- the federal immigration agencies shall:

  • Judge people seeking immigration benefits or relief from removal as individuals, based on the merit or demerit of their factual and legal circumstances.
  • Refrain from profiling people by color or national origin.
  • Apply neutrally phrased legislation even-handedly, without regard to any personal agenda of the adjudicator to serve as an unappointed line of defense against an influx of applicants from a particular country or with a certain complexion.

The President's order should require the Secretaries of State, Labor, Justice and DHS to produce a formal plan in 90 days to investigate and eliminate racial and national-origin profiling, discipline or dismiss any immigration officials who are found to have engaged in prohibited profiling, and publish periodic progress reports.  Under the order, claims of racial or national-origin profiling should be jointly investigated and violations enforced by the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Justice department's Civil Rights Division. 

As I write this blog, urging one more measure to make America a truly welcoming country, I sense my father is smiling from the grave.  He (very likely) and I (absolutely) are chuckling as we recall Mark Twain's wisdom:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

By the way, for those of you who've met me and are wondering why I have Americanized the pronunciation of my name, sounding out the letter "a" like the "BAA" of bleating sheep, just ask Antonio Mendoza in this classic Saturday Night Live sketch:

Posted by Angelo A. Paparelli on October 22, 2011

Legislatively Required, Bureaucratically Enabled Immigration Deaths

skull.jpgMany dysfunctions within the immigration ecospace are disturbing, but some make my blood boil.  The conniption that brought me to this Howard Beale moment erupted after I belatedly read a Forbes online article, published last April, by Osha Gray Davis ("A Death in Juarez: How U.S. Immigration Policy Is Tearing American Families Apart"). The Forbes piece reported on two people murdered in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez and countless others living there in fear (just across from El Paso, ironically, one of America's safest cities) while waiting for the completion of snails-pace immigrant visa procedures at the U.S. consulate.    

Sadly, Americans by now may be inured to the everyday nature of the drug cartels' killing fields in Mexico, particularly in Juarez.  Last year, 15,000 people were slaughtered in Mexico -- the direct or collateral damage from the drug wars. Juarez, with over 3,000 killings a year, has earned a macabre distinction as Mexico's Murder Capital.  Just this month, two U.S. citizens, a mother and son from Kansas, died there when assault-rifle fire sprayed their SUV.

The situation has become so dire that even the Department of Homeland Security recognizes the importance of returning deportees to the interior of Mexico, far from Juarez, in order to "safeguard" the "the health, dignity, and well-being of undocumented migrants during the repatriation process."

DHS solicitude for the safety of the deported is commendable.  But why does it not also extend to more deserving Mexican citizens who, as the parents and spouses of U.S. citizens, may be eligible to receive green cards?  Why is it official U.S. policy that these immigrant visa applicants are permitted to appear for their mandatory visa interview only at the U.S. consulate in this city of blood lust? 

The problem is not a small one.  The consulate in Juarez is "the largest issuer of [U.S.] immigrant visas in the world," according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.  Neither is the waiting time trivial.  The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman reports that half of the Mexican citizens seeking U.S. immigrant visas who require a waiver of inadmissibility, usually on a showing of extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen spouse or parent, must wait up to 12 months for a decision in their case.  Since a wait of even one day in Juarez may make the applicant a sitting duck for cartel violence, a year-long wait is simply unconscionable.  Worse yet, as explained below, if a waiver application is denied, the family separation may be for ten years or more.

This deadly form of Juarez red rover arises primarily from a failed experiment in 1996 at the instigation of Representative Lamar Smith -- now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee -- who championed the "unlawful presence" bar to reentry that became part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA).  The bar in most cases involves a decade-long ban on readmission to the U.S. (unless an extreme-hardship waiver is granted) for persons who entered illegally or overstayed the time period granted by the government.  The ten-year bar (like IIRAIRA's three-year and permanent bans on returning) is triggered only after the overstayer or EWI (one who "enters without inspection") has left the United States.  Thus, what might otherwise be a one- or two-day game of consular Russian Roulette in Juarez (as immigrant visa and waiver processing are completed) becomes a one- or ten-year-long exposure to cartel carnage for the 50% of extreme-hardship waiver applicants who are not granted expedited review or are denied a waiver.

As a 2011 law review article ("The American Dream Deferred: Family Separation and Immigrant Visa Adjudications at U.S. Consulates Abroad") argues persuasively, the "choice" facing U.S.-citizen spouses, parents and children of either separation from a loved one for up to ten years (if the waiver is refused) or relocation of the family to a narco-state (my wording) is a Morton's fork on which no one should ever be forcibly skewered:

This form of collective punishment is anti-family and can send ripple effects throughout American communities, from home foreclosures to an increase in single parent households. It is a drastic penalty to impose considering unlawful presence in the U.S. is a civil violation that has gone largely unenforced for many years. It also discourages families from participating in the legal immigration process due to the risk of a potentially devastating separation. After more than ten years since the passage of the unlawful presence bars, it is now appropriate to look closely at their impact and examine whether they constitute sound public policy.

Although IIRAIRA and the administrative time required in the waiver adjudication process might seem to mandate this result, existing executive authority to administer the immigration laws readily allows for a suitable fix (until Congress can be persuaded to repeal the unlawful presence bars).  Here are various actions the Obama Administration could take to solve the problem:

  • Grant "parole in place" and expand the "technical-reasons" or no-fault-of-the-applicant forgiveness provision of Immigration and Nationality Act § 245(c) to allow persons otherwise required to attend an immigrant visa interview in Juarez to apply for their green cards through the adjustment of status process. This is the best option for non-willful overstays and Dream Act kids who EWI'd because the unlawful-presence bar would not be triggered and extreme-hardship waiver adjudication would be unnecessary since the applicant would not leave the United States; or
  • Adopt a policy to confer extreme-hardship waivers within the U.S. before the consular interview to all non-criminal Mexican applicants based on the dangerous conditions in Mexico and the overriding equity of the family relationship to a U.S. citizen relative.  This is similar to an old Immigration and Naturalization Service Operations Instruction and a precedent decision, Matter of Cavazos, which allowed comparable applicants to obtain green cards through adjustment of status despite inadmissibility; or
  • Shut down the U.S. consulate in Juarez until conditions in the city are safe.  (The State Department did close the Juarez post for a few days after two consular employees were killed last year.) State should instead designate alternative consular posts after negotiating with one or more friendly and safer countries to allow Mexican applicants eligible to apply for a hardship waiver to enter for the purpose of attending the consular interview.  This approach would be modeled after the "stateside criteria" and "third-country processing" arrangements with Canada and other nations in the 1980s for Iranians and other foreign nationals who could not travel to their country of citizenship or last residence because of the unavailability of consular facilities there.  It would require an agreement with the host countries to assure the readmission of any denied applicants through the grant of advance parole to reenter.  Denied visa applicants given advance parole and readmitted to the U.S. would then be eligible under current law for adjustment of status, if USCIS granted an extreme hardship waiver, or for prosecutorial discretion, if the waiver were denied.

As these options show, seemingly mandatory legislative procedures that lead to immigration deaths only appear necessary if the Administration is unwilling to look under the hood of the immigration laws to find more compassionate and life-saving alternatives. End the immigration deaths in Juarez NOW.